the server appeared at exactly the right moment and swept them into ordering. While she listened to her parents make their choices, she tried to line up some safe topics in her mind. But suddenly everything seemed like something she’d rather sidestep. Even talking about Jane and her baby was fraught, since her plans hadn’t exactly unfolded as expected.
They caught up for awhile, and it did Katy’s heart good to hear about her brother and cousins, about the goings on in Pine Creek and just a bit beyond. That’s as far as Katy wanted her mind to travel.
“I left something in your truck,” her mother said, smile as big as ever.
“Ooh, did you bake me cookies?”
“Ye won’t stay fit for long if ye start indulging in your mother’s sweets,” her father said with a grin of his own.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Papa,” she said and glanced back to her mother. “Seriously, do I get cookies?”
Libby shook her head. “Not this time. Just a copy of the Pine Lake Weekly Gazette. It’s not every day that one of our town daughters becomes a real, live queen, and I thought you’d like to see the story.”
Katy bit her lip, then thought better of it. Her mother missed nothing. “Oh, thanks. And yes, our Jane is a queen with her very own princess to love.”
“Is she beautiful?” Libby breathed.
Fortunately, Katy only had time for one smiling, duplicitous nod before the server—clearly an angel with impeccable timing—appeared at the table with their food. Her stomach practically snarled in anticipation of dinner. Not sure if she was dizzy because all she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours was airline snacks or from relief that she just might survive this reunion, Katy attacked the two-pound hard-shell lobster with ravenous gusto. Exactly as delicious as she remembered.
She’d finished both claws before she recalled she was also supposed to be carrying on a conversation with her parents. She glanced up to find them both watching her with bemused grins.
“I guess it’s good?” her mother said.
“Amazing.”
Her father cleared his throat. “On a completely different note, since ye failed to say where you’ll be living in Spellbound Falls, I took the liberty of speaking with Duncan, and he insisted ye stay with him and Peg.” His eyes lit with amusement. “MacKeage also agreed to let ye bring that delicate mare of yours. Ye can give him a call on your way through Turtleback Station, and he’ll be at the dock by the time you arrive in Spellbound tonight. And in return for his generosity, I told him you’ll be glad to help Peg with the children and whatever farm chores need doing.”
Katy had seen that one coming from a mile away. No, from two thousand miles away, actually, knowing that within minutes of her call from Colorado telling her parents about her new job in Spellbound Falls, this overprotective tower of granite would be on the phone with Duncan. This was her moment, her fork in the road.
“That was sweet of him. And you,” Katy added with a bright smile, knowing he didn’t much care for being referred to as sweet. “But a nine-mile water commute, especially in the winter, isn’t very practical if my pager goes off in the middle of the night. That’s why I already booked a site at a campground twenty miles south of Spellbound. They have these great platform tents, like the cabins I used to stay in at summer camp.” She shrugged to keep from squirming when his eyes narrowed. “Once I’m settled into my job, I plan to look for a small house to rent closer to town.”
“A house ye intend to live in alone?”
Katy kept her eyes locked on his. “Considering the crazy shifts I’ll be working, I’d rather not deal with a roommate.” Dammit, she was twenty-eight, not eighteen. “And these last couple of months, I discovered I like living alone.”
Michael MacBain set down his fork, leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve changed.”
“One of us had to,” Katy returned just as softly. “And since it’s my life we’re talking about, I decided it would be me.”
The din of the restaurant receded into a silence that stretched one heartbeat . . . two . . . only to be broken by a feminine sigh. “Welcome to adulthood, Katy,” Libby said with a smile.
Okay, she must still be asleep on the plane and this was some weird, impossible dream. Katy darted glances between them before